


SUMMER | Road Trip

by sissynecks



Series: I'll Always Be Your Cutie (Dongwoo/Sunggyu Series) [2]
Category: Infinite (Band), K-pop
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-05-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 09:34:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/822780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sissynecks/pseuds/sissynecks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of my Dongwoo/Sunggyu ficlets. Various themes and situations, all somehow connected. WARNINGS: Fluff AND MORE FLUFF（人´∀`*）</p>
            </blockquote>





	SUMMER | Road Trip

Through a series of incredibly fortunate and unforeseeable events that one tepid summer, they get a week and a half vacation time that lands Dongwoo in the driver’s seat of a rented Volvo on a road trip across the country. Sunggyu borrows Myungsoo’s camera and prepares a duffel with t-shirts, red ginseng, and sunscreen. Dongwoo packs the rest, more than enough for the both of them.

“We travel too much as it is,” Sunggyu complains even as they’re waving goodbye to the others and setting off. He shifts restlessly in the passenger seat and stares out the window as Seoul comes to life. Dongwoo insisted on leaving early, and without a morning spent in the makeup chair, the skin under Sunggyu’s eyes is still puffy and grey. “Why couldn’t we just stay home for once?”

Dongwoo huffs, because sometimes Sunggyu is completely unromantic. “This time we get to go wherever we want and take as long as we want,” he explains, then veers a sudden right onto the main highway as he throws their map out the window. “We don’t need any schedule to tell us where we’re going!”

“I can’t believe you just did that,” Sunggyu says.

“Learn to be spontaneous, hyung.”

A few minutes later, they take an exit and Dongwoo stops at a convenience store because they’d apparently forgotten to stock up on snacks. The backseat is soon loaded full of water bottles, tangerines, and bags of crappy chips and cookies. Back on the road, Dongwoo chews gummy candies and taps his knuckles on the steering wheel, sometimes letting go entirely to rest his arms behind his head, and laughs when Sunggyu flips out.

“I’m riding with a madman,” Sunggyu says, on his phone, probably texting it back to Woohyun.

“You can’t talk when none of you have your licenses,” Dongwoo sing-songs. “Does this mean I control the shots or does the passenger dictate the driver in this situation?”

“That would be the case if you didn’t throw away the map,” says Sunggyu.

“Just saying ‘right’ or ‘left’ would still work!”

Sunggyu thinks it over. He shrugs, “Just go straight until you hit a mountain or something.”

“You are the leader,” says Dongwoo agreeably, and when they try to take pictures of themselves with Myungsoo’s camera, he laughs so hard their Volvo almost careens into the side of a merging U-Haul.

Completely exhausted fifteen minutes into the drive, Sunggyu zips up his hoodie all the way and sinks down into the seat, starts to mumble one-word answers into his chest. “You can take a nap,” Dongwoo suggests, turning on cruise control. The sun is warm but not overwhelming, and he’ll open the windows a little bit once they reach quieter roads. They obviously don’t have anything planned, but he does, for some reason, want to see cows. He turns to Sunggyu and grins. “We’ve got time.” 

Sunggyu’s returning smile is grateful and familiar. He curls up on his side facing Dongwoo, and is asleep before the song on the radio is over.

\--/--

Quietly, Dongwoo slips in a CD and punches a few buttons. '60 Seconds' starts playing, and Sunggyu stirs on cue. Aviators are perched on his nose shiny with sweat, and Dongwoo pulls them off before they can fall. At that, Sunggyu shivers and slowly blinks awake.

“Hello,” greets Dongwoo. “Good beauty sleep?”

Sunggyu yawns in reply. He always looks completely vulnerable right after waking, especially under light softening the pinched lines at the corners of his mouth. His eyes that are usually so distant and distracted are now warm and content when they meet Dongwoo’s. Dongwoo’s chest clenches. He thinks of naps during the day and the color yellow.

Sunggyu blinks a couple more times, strains to listen harder. “…is this what I think it is?”

“What do you think it is?” Dongwoo says innocently, and turns up the volume. 'I Need You' starts, and Dongwoo giggles.

“ _Jang Dongwoo_ ,” Sunggyu admonishes, and reaches over to tickle under Dongwoo’s chin.

“Jang Dongwoo~ Dongwoo Jang~ Dong Jjang,” Dongwoo sings as they continue along the long, straight road flanked by acres of open land. Sunggyu peers in the overhead mirror and finger-combs his bangs. Then suddenly, Dongwoo swerves to the farthest right lane, knocking Sunggyu’s forehead against the side window. Dongwoo adds, by way of explanation, “Look!”

A small hutch set up on the side of the road boasts a hand painted sign that says simply: _APPLES_. Sunggyu rubs his forehead and grumbles, but Dongwoo slows the tires over gravel and kills the engine.

The sun feels good on Dongwoo’s face when he gets out of the car. He leaves behind a stretching Sunggyu and walks up to where an elderly woman sits on a beach chair, fanning herself and her crates of freshly-picked apples.

“Oh,” she says reverently as Dongwoo bounds up. She squints up at his figure backlit by the sun. “Oh my. What a handsome boy you are!”

Dongwoo’s laugh carries all the way back to the car; Sunggyu’s head pokes up from the other side of it. Dongwoo bows, saying, “Thank you, thank you,” and the old lady with her steady hands and adoring eyes continues, “Pretty, just like my son.” She’s already reaching for a black garbage bag and starts throwing in apples one by one. “You look just like my son, when he was younger. He was such a beautiful boy. Ah, youth never really dies.”

Dongwoo is desperately charmed. “Beauty is infinite!” he proclaims. “The proof is right here.” He gestures to the old lady, and she grasps Dongwoo’s hands in hers and laughs as Sunggyu wanders up, who is then forced to carry back to the car five bags of fresh apples for the price of three. Dongwoo waves goodbye and pays full price anyway.

Sunggyu stares at the bags in the backseats looking like their gaggle of children safely buckled in for the trip. “How the hell are we going to eat them all?”

“Well,” says Dongwoo cheerfully as he bites into one washed under the stream of an Evian bottle—he thinks of summertime, dancing, and the old woman’s sparkling, crinkly eyes—“at least this way we’ll actually be healthy!”

\--/--

Twelve minutes later,

“COWS,” Dongwoo yells, and veers off to the right again.

“Cows cows cows cows cows cows,” he says, grabbing Myungsoo’s camera and bounding out of the car through the fields. A chocolate brown one stands just on the other side of a wooden fence, tail flopping and disinterestedly watching Dongwoo sprint towards it.

“Dongwoo!” Sunggyu yells after him, and then (because, surprisingly, Sunggyu is a very fast runner) catches up and grabs Dongwoo’s back in a tight hug. It catches him by surprise, and they tumble back into sweet-smelling lemongrass and buttercups.

“Oof.”

Dongwoo cackles, kicking his legs up in the air as Sunggyu rolls off him and lands on a dirt clod, sending up soft tan clouds. “Why’d you do that?” he says, still laughing.

Sunggyu’s face is hidden by his arm. “You make me do these things,” he says, breathing hard.

Dongwoo thinks about it, then seems pleased.

“I wanted to see a cow,” he says. He brushes off his jeans, picks up the camera (thankfully unharmed, or Myungsoo would probably cry), and starts snapping photos right up in the cow’s nose.

Sunggyu takes a picture of both of them with the cow and then posts it on Twitter with the caption: _Meet the newest member of Infinite!!! ㅋㅋㅋ_

Seven minutes later, Sungyeol replies: _And we already like him better than you, hyung!_ , while Howon adds in, _Wow he looks just like Dongwoo hyung!!_

Sunggyu tweets back to both of them: _Sleep with one eye open._

\--/--

They send each other abuse over the phone later because they all don’t really function as well when apart. Sunggyu puts his cell on speaker and Dongwoo yells his love for them all except Howon (“Just kidding! I love you the most~♡”) as they look for dinner nearby in a small town.

They stop at a small family restaurant that reminds Dongwoo of his parents’ place, and the smell of hot grills and comfortable booths continues to relax the tired hunch of Sunggyu’s shoulders. They order enough meat to feed their entire dorm for a week. Their server is a cute girl with a pink bow in her hair that stands out against her white uniform, and Dongwoo thinks Sunggyu would probably hit on her if he were to ask how old she was.

But Sunggyu just sips hot barley tea and looks through the photos they took that day, deleting the ones Dongwoo took while Sunggyu was sleeping.

“You were still driving then!” Sunggyu says, aghast.

“I was very careful,” Dongwoo says.

“I’m getting rid of them all. And I think I’ll post _this_ one on Twitter!”

“No, hyung! I was just yawning, don’t be a jerk—”

“Don’t call me a jerk, you creep!”

Dongwoo’s laughing so hard he thinks his heart might burst. “How are you going to upload those photos on the camera?”

Sunggyu sniffs. “I’ll take a photo of them with my phone.”

Dongwoo tries to take Sunggyu’s hands imploringly, but then their server girl comes back bearing meat, and they both stop as if they’ve been graced by the presence of an angel.

As they’re busy throwing cuts of pork on the grill, the girl hovers by the table uncertainly. When they look up at her, she clears her throat. “Are you two idols?” she asks.

Dongwoo looks to Sunggyu, who lightly steps on his foot under the table and says to the girl, “It’s an easy mistake to make.” With a sly look, he adds, “Do we…look like idols?”

The girl blushes and waves her hands. “No, no! I didn’t mean to imply anything!”

“We don’t look like idols?” Dongwoo repeats. He turns to Sunggyu, his lower lip jutting out. “We don’t even _look_ like idols.”

The girl says by way of apology, “I just thought you two looked like Infinite, that’s all.”

Sunggyu smiles, but doesn’t say anything, and for a while more he and Dongwoo revel in being anonymous (“See, hyung, we don’t need to wear sunglasses _every time_ we go out.”) as they eat with vindictive thoughts towards their managers and nutrition plans.

Sunggyu chews on the end of his chopsticks and speaks as if he’s thinking aloud. “This is nice. Living like this.”

“Like what?” Dongwoo asks.

“Living…so carefree,” Sunggyu says.

Dongwoo knows that Sunggyu, as their leader, is burdened with responsibilities and pressure Dongwoo won’t know in this lifetime; that when Sunggyu wakes up later than everyone else he will work seven times as hard during practice; that when he talks to everyone’s parents over the phone, he’s careful to relay only the best parts of being an idol—all the things you see on TV. Nothing about an idol’s life is carefree, even though they’re all in the prime of their twenties. _Especially_ not, because with their youth comes a price, and is actually not infinite.

Dongwoo looks at Sunggyu, sees the healthy glow in his cheeks and the flowers beat against his collar, and is stricken by the realization of how much they needed this trip.

“Aren’t you having a good time so far?” Dongwoo just says, as if he’s also saying I told you so.

Sunggyu rolls his eyes and smiles at him indulgently, but it also seems apologetic. “I’m sorry,” he says, “that you have to spend your vacation with me. I always have a good time with you.”

“I do too!” Dongwoo says firmly. Sunggyu is stubborn at the best of times, and he never knows how wrong he can be. “I do too,” Dongwoo says again, and—as always—Sunggyu trusts him.

The girl comes by later to give them their check and her eyes light up when they tell her the truth, and they leave after signing her backpack.

\--/--

They’re sitting on an old picnic bench on top of a grassy hill, overlooking the flat plains as the sun goes down past the horizon. If it were anymore scenic, it’d be on a postcard. This is the first time he’s really taken in the loveliness of the road trip, besides the cows and the lovely old woman selling apples—of seeing grass and fields outside the city and reveling in the silence broken only by crickets chirping. The rest of trip found him focused entirely on Sunggyu.

“You know,” Dongwoo says, “I wouldn’t want to do this with anyone but you.”

Sunggyu’s eyes crinkle shut as he smiles, just like the old lady selling apples. “I wouldn’t let you,” he declares. He scoots a bit closer on this ratty picnic bench, resting his sneakers by Dongwoo’s and throwing his right arm over Dongwoo’s shoulders.

He says, “There’s you, me, and everyone else.”

~*~


End file.
